Wahoo's Legacy: He Leaves Us Laughing

DAVE HYDE Commentary

April 22, 2002|DAVE HYDE Commentary

Who was Wahoo McDaniel?

Who wasn't he?

An American Indian, an expansion Dolphin, a legendary wrestler, an old-time carouser, a full-time personality, an Oiler, a Bronco, a Jet, a guard, a linebacker, a kicker -- he was the kind of figure we lost years ago on the sports pages: the original.

"He was a character," said Frank Emanuel, a teammate on the 1966 Dolphins.

"He was a nut," fellow expansioneer Joe Auer said.

"He was the type of guy who actually bet someone he could run from Midland to Odessa, Texas," Billy Neighbors, a guard on that team, said. "It was like 20 or 30 miles, but Wahoo didn't have a body for running [5-11 and 280 pounds]. So he completes the run, and then in Odessa they bet again -- double or nothing -- that he couldn't drink a quart of oil.

"Wahoo drank half a quart and passed out. I was reading that story in Sports Illustrated, sitting next to Wahoo on a plane flying to some game and asked him if it was true. I couldn't believe it. He told me all about it."

Those were the days when football fit on a more human scale and an expansion team like the Dolphins involved players off the personality charts.

Auer had a pet lion. Cookie Gilchrist jumped from helicopters into lakes to stake mining claims -- and couldn't swim.

The coach, George Wilson, once ordered the team bus to stop at a roadside bar on the way home from a Jacksonville exhibition and drank with them for a good hour.

Among them all, above any of them, was McDaniel. He didn't put his last name on the back of his jersey. Just "Wahoo."

He had already begun a wrestling career in which he would wear an Indian headdress into ring. He partied. And partied. And partied.

"Our first trip to New York to play the Jets, the police were waiting for him outside the plane," Neighbors said.

"They arrested him. They all knew him. He had some disturbing-the-peace ticket or some traffic ticket that he had to pay. One of the coaches went with him and paid a $300 or $400 fine so he could play the next day."

As a player, McDaniel wasn't exactly memorable. Eight years, four AFL teams, 13 interceptions. He played linebacker and punted for the expansion Dolphins, then just linebacker in 1967 and the first part of 1968.

As a teammate, no one forgets him. He put shaving cream in shoes, hot balm in jockstraps, insects in pockets. He leaned trash cans filled with water against doors, then knocked and waited for the answer. ("He loved that one," Auer said.)

His Dolphin days, and pro career, ended in perhaps the only fitting manner.

Midway through the 1968 season, on the eve of a game at Denver, Neighbors received a phone call from McDaniel at 3:30 a.m.

"Wahoo had got in a fight in Denver with some cops, and he put that wrestling move of his -- the sleeper hold -- on a few of them," Neighbors, who was the team's player representative, said. "Wahoo called me on the phone, too, and said he didn't do anything.

"George Wilson came up to my room and said he didn't have a choice. They traded him to San Diego right then, in the middle of that night. That was the last time I saw Wahoo."

On Saturday, Neighbors opened his newspaper in Hunstville, Ala., and read the same story that Auer did in Winter Park and Mingo did in Denver.

McDaniel had died in Houston, at 63, of complications from having both kidneys removed.

The assistant giving notices to those being cut was coming door-to-door down the hall. The knock came on Mingo's door. A player in the room was about to be cut.

"Wahoo had this Bowie knife he carried around," Mingo said. "When they opened the door, Wahoo let out an Indian yell and threw the knife into the wall. That guy went running down the hall so fast, yelling, `He's crazy! He's trying to kill me!'"